1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a polarizing plate comprising a cured layer of a curable composition, an adhesive composition useful for producing the polarizing plate, and an image display apparatus comprising the polarizing plate.
2. Description of the Related Art
Polarizing plates comprising polarizers to which iodine or dichroic dyes are adsorbed are widely used in, for example, liquid crystal displays. Such a polarizing plate is generally produced by stretching a hydrophilic polymer film such as a polyvinyl alcohol film and allowing iodine or a dichroic dye to be adsorbed onto the film to produce a polarizer, and bonding protective films on both surfaces of the polarizer with an adhesive agent. Many adhesive agents used in production of the polarizing plates also have been proposed (e.g., JP-A-2005-208456, Japanese Patent No. 4306270, and JP-A-2008-63527).
Incidentally, various circular polarizing plates each comprising the above-described polarizer and a λ/4 layer of a curable liquid crystal composition have been proposed as those having a function of converting linearly polarized light into circularly polarized light. The circular polarizing plates having such a structure are used in various fields, for example, 3D image displays (3-dimensional display) that display 3D images using circularly polarized light. Furthermore, various polarizing plates each comprising a cured layer (e.g., a hard coat layer or an antireflection layer) of a curable composition, in addition to the curable liquid crystal composition, have been proposed.